Lgbtq Famous Quotes

The Lottery by Stewart Stafford It was New York, 1984, The AIDS tsunami roared in, Friends, old overnight, no more, Breathless, I went for a check-up. A freezing winter's dawn, A solitary figure before me, What we called a drag queen, White heels trembled in the cold. "Hi, are you here to get tested?" Gum chewed, brown eyes stared. This was not my type of person, I turned heel and walked away. At month's end, a crippling flu, The grey testing centre called, Two hundred people ahead of me; A waking nightmare all too real. I gave up and turned to leave, But a familiar voice called out: "Hey, you there, come back!" I stopped and turned around. The drag queen stood there in furs, But sicker, I didn't recognise them, "Stand with me in the line, honey." "Nah, I'm fine, I'll come back again." "Support an old broad before she faints?" A voice no longer frail but pin-sharp. I got in line to impatient murmurs: "If anyone has a problem, see me!" Sylvester on boombox, graveyard choir. My pal's stage name was Carol DaRaunch, (After the Ted Bundy female survivor) Their real name was Ernesto Rodriguez. After seeing the doctor, Carol hugged me, Writing down their number on some paper, With their alias not their real name on it: "Is this the number of where you work?" "THAT is my home number to call me on. THAT'S my autograph, for when I'm famous!" "I was wrong about you, Carol," I said. "Baby, it takes time to get to know me!" A hug, shimmy, the threadbare blonde left. A silent chorus of shuffling dead men walking, Spartan results, a young man's death sentence. Real words faded rehearsal, my eyes watered. Two weeks on, I cautiously phoned up Carol. The receiver was picked up, dragging sounds, Like furniture being moved: "Is Carol there?" "That person is dead." They hung up on me. All my life's harsh judgements, dumped on Carol, Who was I to win life's lottery over a guardian angel? I still keep that old phone number forty years on, Crumpled, faded, portable guilt lives on in my wallet. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.

run by ExaminerOnline and its sister outlets was about influencers (whatever they were), TV personalities, actors, famous chefs, stand-up comics, outlandish artists, fashion designers, athletes, musicians, the rich . . . basically any manner of celebrity, provided they were hugely popular or sexy or had either spoken up for a good cause (LGBTQ and animals were winners) or misbehaved in a tasty, but misdemeanorly way.

Many creators are already afraid to use their community’s vocabulary because of the perception that the algorithm is working against them. TikTok in particular lost a lot of trust due to occasional “glitches” like the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag showing up with zero views[6] or the exposés showing how it prevented undesirable creators from showing up on the For You page. Reading between the lines, these creators choose to find algospeak replacements instead of using their own language. This is an incredibly relevant concern in the LGBTQ+ space. Beyond mass-reporting trolls and built-in bias politicizing queer identity, the community has to contend with direct geographic suppression. TikTok has openly admitted to censoring hashtags like #gay and #trans in conservative regions like Russia and the Middle East,[7] so, again, there’s been ample reason to be suspicious of the platform. Murky or incomplete feedback only worsens the issue. Several American trans creators have complained about being banned without explanation—contributing to the justifiable paranoia even if their incidents had valid but uncited rationale. As a result, many queer creators feel they must resort to algospeak to best express their identity. You’ll see people use the word “zesty” or the emoji as a metonym for “gay.” In other instances, they’ve replaced the term “LGBTQ+” with phrases like “leg booty” or “alphabet mafia.” The most famous example in the early 2020s was probably “le$bian” for “lesbian.” While this might seem like a typical grawlix substitution, TikTok’s text-to-speech function clearly didn’t understand that, and would instead read the phrase aloud as “le dollar bean.” This pronunciation was so wholly embraced by the online lesbian community that many creators started saying it out loud themselves.